


On the Musings of a Dark Elf

by Darkhymns



Category: Dragonlance - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Genre: Angst, Developing Friendships, Flashbacks, Gen, Introspection, Memories, minor mentions of political intrigue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:01:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28148010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkhymns/pseuds/Darkhymns
Summary: Dalamar yearns for the home he had been forced to leave behind. But Laurana warns him of what to expect. For the world of Krynn is forever changing.Takes place just after the Dragonlance novella, "Sacrifice".
Relationships: Dalamar the Dark & Laurana Kanan, Dalamar the Dark & Tanis Half-Elven
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	On the Musings of a Dark Elf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aroberuka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroberuka/gifts).



> This was such an interesting assignment which I hope I could meet expectations! I am fascinated by Dalamar despite never writing him before and the suggested prompts made me re-evaluate a little bit more on his friendship with Tanis and what was a missed opportunity with Laurana. A lot of it became very introspective, and honestly, I really wish I could expand on this even further! (I had more ideas about the road trip to Silvanesti, but they didn't fully pan out). Still, I hope you can enjoy this story! Happy Holidays!

Once, on a musing he could not deny, Dalamar had snuck a scrying glance at the state of his old homeland.

They say that during the horrific dream of Silvanesti, the trees would bend like aged hands and that the animals would go raving mad, the gentlest of them attacking any stragglers on sight. Once crystal-clear lakes would turn to charcoal black, tasting of sulfur, leaving a coated film on the lips of anyone who dared to drink from its depths. Pockets of draconian armies would still outline the once twisted forests, immune to the remembered whisperings of a green dragon, poison filling the land until the soil itself was bloated, and the boughs of great oaks withered and died.

Dalamar had thought he would feel nothing but contempt, knowing of his homeland’s continued suffering from what seemed to be a never-ending nightmare. A vengeance he had no part in, but wished he did all the same.  _ Let them all rot after what they denied me, _ he had thought, and at first, such feelings were true, for he no longer had any love for his kin.

Bound by hand and foot, and blindfolded so that he could not even see the skies he had long known, he had been thrown far away from the borders during the midst of war. And as if to put salt in his wound, it was not even Silvanesti hands that had cast him out. Porthios Quindinair of the Qualinesti had not been kind or merciful. His grip had left bruises on Dalamar’s arms for long days afterward as he hobbled down roads, down places where no roof would ever accept a dark elf.

Dalamar had snuck down into his  _ shalafi’s _ laboratory, where awful little monsters, blind and limbless, would still crawl on the floor. It was not entirely true that darkness could not create, but when it did, it was never to expectations. He moved from them in barely concealed disgust, went over to the scrying pool, and whispered the words needed so that he could witness, so that he could finally feel satisfaction.

_ They denied me, _ he would repeat in his head. It would not be the first time he would see Silvanesti as it presently was either, having been cast out just as the nightmare still kept its very hold over the land. He just wanted to confirm, to know that all the people he loathed still suffered, and suffered greatly.

And then he saw the fields blackened, coated with poison, the same fields that he would rush through when he was young. He witnessed, and it was as if he peered through a degraded painting, the colors running down the canvas and turning into murky shades.

Silvanesti still wrenched at his heart, even at its very ugliest.

How foolish it was to still be yearning a home that would never have you.

* * *

The exile for Tanis Half-Elven had been quick if not painless. If the tension in the air could be trusted, more than a few gods today were watching over him that day.

So did Dalamar, who observed from within the nearby brush of the Qualinesti border, not even deigning to waste his energy on an invisibility spell. He remembered the scathing words his friend would have for his old home, for the ones he grew up with, for their unrelenting stubbornness they had to change, something that was so natural to Tanis’ human half. But, Dalamar had seen the tears, brief as they were as he walked the six, grueling steps out of Qualinesti to be cast out of the light.

But he was not bound by hand and foot. And the soldiers even deigned to give him  _ directions _ to avoid his way into Darken Wood. The smile Dalamar knew that he wore was bitter and tight, if still amused. A newly-made dark elf, treated with respect.

It does not make him regret anything, still.

The plan afterwards, just as Tanis says goodbye to his son, a king-prisoner of his nation, is to travel to Silvanesti, where Alhana is heading for. Dalamar can feel the Dark Queen’s displeasure running through him, akin to a chill when the night suddenly rushes a cold wind through one’s bones, pricking deep into the skin. Seeing Gilthanas’ earlier resolve, even as it seemed he was winding his silk-made chains around himself to the council, convinced Dalamar that he would prove to be some trouble.

“How do I tell her?” Tanis asked, and Dalamar knew it was more that he was speaking aloud than actually asking him. He answered anyway. He needed no specification on who Tanis meant.

“How you always do things. In a complete blunder, with all the finesse of a pig tripping into the fence of his pen. But I am sure Laurana is quite used to that.”

The sigh from Tanis was deep. Already, his tempestuous anger from before was winding down. But Dalamar could see the purple marks on Tanis’ knuckles, the reminder of how his human side ruled over him more than most – but Dalamar could not deny that Rashas’ comeuppance wasn’t quite deserved. And leave it up to human qualities to spice up what could have simply been a dreary elven meeting.

“Too used to it. She should not have to be.” Tanis bit his lip, looked back towards the homeland that he was now barred from forever, the thick, heavy boughs of Qualinesti’s trees capturing the sunlight in its outstretched greenery. Hidden within, the city and its winding structures, its mosaic with the stylized moons – all three of them – grinning down at the marbled floor of the Tower of the Sun.

_ Do you truly miss it? A home that you ran away from yourself? A home that you have said, time and time again, never wanted you to begin with? _

Dalamar didn’t ask this. It should not matter to him.

Tanis turned back to Dalamar, heaved out another sigh, the wrinkles around his eyes looking deeper than before. It was as if his human years had doubled, all in the space of a single afternoon. “Let’s go,” he told the  _ other _ dark elf.

Tanis had always been quite interesting company.

Dalamar smiled, reached out to grab Tanis’ arm, thick and sturdy against his slender fingers. The difference was striking, but for those cast out of the light, all were the same when cloaked in darkness.

“Remember what I said. It is easier to handle when you shut your eyes.” By then, Dalamar was already whispering the incantations, and he saw Tanis’ blue gaze flicker, just moments before they traveled through the magic corridors. If the other did not know when to follow instructions, that was through no fault of Dalamar.

* * *

Raistlin had once told him of the very time he knew he would become a mage. It was when all three gods of magic appeared before him when he was young, and how Lunitari, with her laughing tone and her wide smile, shone on him like the half-remembered warmth of a twilight-lit sky. She had been impressed by him the most, which is why his shalafi had favored the red robes for so long before turning to the dark. 

Those same red robes were within the tower’s closets, (after one of Dalamar’s many perusings through his shalafi’s belongings) hidden away among pitch black, its color seeming to radiate amusement even when around such grimness.

Dalamar had never met all three gods – only one, within a dream, or perhaps more fittingly, a nightmare.

Born into House Servitor, he was meant to obey, and he was meant to  _ serve. _ But Dalamar had never been satisfied, even when he was taught the simplest of spells, magic that was only meant to complete mundane errands. He fretted at the yoke that was his lowly station, and the white robes they gave him was of no comfort. He had never taken the Test. He had never manipulated the forces that governed this world to his own bidding, with the blessings of the moons.

It was not enough. And then the dreams came to him.

Dalamar was usually soothed by the sun, but in his dreams, it was scorching hot, and it blinded him to his path. He did not know where he was, if he was still in Silvanesti or lost somewhere else in the tangled, confusing lands of Ansalon. He tried to search for shade where he could, just to give relief to his eyes. The light kept hammering down on him, piercing his skull as much as it could,

He could only find relief in a cave, far off to the side, nearly hidden from the intense light. In his dreams, he stumbled, sometimes never making it or missing his mark. But one night, he finally went inside, and he blinked away the brightness to find solace in the shadows.

The darkness within was engulfing, like the open maw into a pit. But he didn’t turn away, his steps leading him further into the caves that were cold, the stalactites dripping with water from above. Further and further, until so little sound was left… and he saw a man seated within, holding a great tome in his hands, preoccupied with reading from it.

The man, dressed in the same darkness of the cave, raised his eyes towards Dalamar. It was a face he did not recognize, and yet felt familiar with all too well.

“You have searched for my place within the skies,” the man said, even though his lips never moved. They were punctuated within Dalamar’s skull, like heavy footfalls. “Only those who have pledged to me can do so.”

_ I have never done so, _ Dalamar wanted to argue, but found his tongue to be still. He recalled the nights he had looked up into the skies, bathed by Solinari’s light, and when Lunitari would wane further in the distance, her light tinging the trees just so, as if dripping with crimson. But he would keep searching, and searching. Only star-counting, only dreaming.

The man closed the book in his hands. The runes on its covers gleamed with silver, the bookmark that trailed from within its pages made with the softest velvet.

“Stand still and be overwhelmed. Or seek me out.” Then Dalamar would wake, the sunlight streaming in from the windows that were open to the skies, letting in the birdsong, the spring breeze, and the scent of pollen from freshly bloomed flowers.

But he felt the yoke on his neck. He felt the need for change.

* * *

Dalamar suspected that it was Tanis’ aversion to his magical transportation that he and Laurana decided to simply  _ walk _ to Silvanesti, in a way.

“…And we do this to simply see the sights?” he asked, a smirk on his thin lips. The home of Tanis and Laurana was almost rustic in its design, with stark angles along its edges, and built high up in cliffs, away from any weathered traveling road. The urge for solitude was at least something the dark elf could understand.

“It’d be better to catch up to Alhana on the way instead of before. As much as I hate to say it, appearances will matter greatly here.” Tanis was tying up his satchel with all too much weathered practice in his motions. It is said that kender have the wanderlust, but Tanis, in all his traveling before his marriage, would have been a good contender for the appellation. “The treaty may be dead in the water, but we can stop the bloodshed between the elven nations before it’s too late.”

“I already told you, Tanis, my friend. It’s already begun.”  _ You did not see the marks on Alhana’s hands? _ Dalamar had noted the faint scarring on her palms, how she must have tried to stop the fighting, and instead got wounded herself.

“Damn it, well I won’t let it happen further! I won’t let my own son have to deal with…” Tanis clenched his fists around the tie-string of his satchel. Perhaps he was imagining himself choking Rashas’ very throat. “We will be riding the griffins besides, so it won’t be much of a walk anyway to put you into any risk.”

“To think that you would care! Forgive me if I don’t jump for joy at that.” Dalamar had ridden griffins before, but they could not be as controlled as his own incantations to whisk through the world, and riding them was always a hectic journey besides.

“Then the truth of the matter is that it would also give me time to think… I need to think on it all some more.” There was the age-old conflict in his eyes, always moving from one side of the matter to the next. How a man forever in conflict with himself could have helped led a war to victory, could have saved Palanthas the once-Beautiful from complete disaster, was something that Dalamar still tried to wrap his mind around, even twenty years later.

“You may think as long as you want, my friend. Just inform me when we are finally ready to leave? I find I have such little patience these days.”

Tanis faced him finally, blinking. “Yes…I think I know why as well.”

That confirmed it for Dalamar. The same pain was there, in his voice. But did he really, truly understand?

“Then pick up the pace, if you please,” Dalamar said the last tightly, more than he meant to. But he didn’t stretch the truth by much when he talked about patience. He walked out of the room, retreating further into the main lobby of the house, already imagining the words to travel to where he needed to be, to where he was  _ promised _ to be.

He would be home among the trees, among his homeland, and there was nothing any of his kin could do to deny him that. 

“Dalamar?” spoke a voice, her accent familiar, if only by halves. The Qualinesti tone differed only slightly from Silvanesti, but Dalamar heard it regardless, the tongue of someone who had been entrenched in elven society, unlike Tanis’ words of twilight, going from one way to the next.

“Lauralanthalasa. If it is your husband you seek, he is simply in the next room.” He bowed to her, as was polite. They had rarely spoken to one another, and to be quite honest, Dalamar was fine to leave it that way. “Don’t let me be in your way.”

“You are not at all,” Laurana reassured, and he thought he heard the humility in her tone. Looking at her, Dalamar could easily see the years of maturity that graced her eyes, if not her features the way humans were built. Too many, she must simply look like a young elf maiden, pampered within her household, naïve to the ways to the world.

But, Dalamar remembered the tales of the Golden General. Even Kitiara could not stay quiet about that, many years back.

The grief in her gaze was also apparent, and he wondered just how long she must have wept for her now imprisoned son. Yet here she was, already dressed for travel. He saw the leather boots she wore, the traveling cloak around her shoulders, the hint of armor underneath. The same armor, perhaps? That would be wise of her.

“Dalamar, I just would like to thank you…for helping Tanis. And for trying to help… Gilthanas.” She choked on the name, but only very briefly. “Having you with us on this journey is also of immeasurable aid. I am grateful for that.”

Dalamar knows that she suspects his true role in all this, and it is in her very tone that she does. Tanis had only spoken to Laurana about Gilthanas’ situation, and not, exactly, of how he came to be there. Of how he did so through a little nudge of Dalamar’s own hand.

She is not naïve to the world. And anyone who makes such a mistake of this ‘elf maiden’ would be very foolish to do so.

“I am only here for one thing now, dear Lauralanthalasa.” Speaking in the Qualinesti tongue is second-nature to him, though it does not have the same thrall as the tongue of his homeland. Perhaps for the better, for just hearing it spoken is enough to send his heart lurching. Could he stand it to have it moving across his own tongue? “You and Tanis both ride to Silvanesti, where I need to be.”

“Need to be,” she repeated back, curious over those words. “So what Tanis has said is true; you are allowed back into your home.”

He smiled in a twisted way, knowing the shadows of his hood would dim it from her eyes. “For a brief time, and I will enjoy it to the fullest.” He looked to the side, looked towards the direction of that same elven continent, to where the sun sets so fully along its hills. “I will enjoy their looks of abject horror as I sit in the shade of my favorite everwood… if it is still there.” He turned back to her. “Perhaps you would know that?”

He has known of Laurana traveling to Silvanesti during the throes of its dream, part of the host of Qualinesti elves to help calm the raging trees, to nurse the plants back to a beauty they once had. He wondered just how much Laurana must have had to face her own fears before soothing it away.

“Silvanesti is not my home, so I cannot say that I know if such a treasured resting spot still exists… Or, I would wager it does, but that it’s shifted, altered itself.”

Dalamar thought he understood completely. “That’s to be expected from the nightmare… I am sure I will find it quite an annoyance to know that my shade is now a few inches further to the left instead of at its once perfect angle.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she told him then, and in that tone, there is something clipped and authoritative.  _ The General, _ but he kept that observation to himself. “The world is changing, as Tanis always says. Even now, I try to fight against it… but he is right.” Locks of blonde hair frame her face as she spoke to him fully. The tears from before had all but dried. “Silvanesti has changed, too. It must, if it is to survive. Both I and Alhana… and my brother. We tried to shift the dream to what we thought was its rightful place, to be  _ away, _ so that everything could be how it used to be. That was the goal, to restore Silvanesti to its beauty.

“But…it can never be that way again, not if it aims to live on. That is why it took us so, so very long to heal it. We had to let the nightmares run its course. We couldn’t just roughly wake up the land from its dream, for it would only stay stuck within it, unable to tell which was illusion or reality. Much like when I wake my husband too early in the morning…” She shook her head, and just then Dalamar truly saw the youth still there, remembering. “I was foolhardy when I went to Silvanesti, and the dreams swallowed me up for a time… It took me ages to truly sleep again.”

Dalamar listened on, unsure at first, what Laurana meant by it all. “The land can’t truly change, not at its roots. Look at your own beloved Qualinesti – still as stubborn as before. They cast out your husband, taken your son. Do not tell me your homeland was different back then.”

He expected anger to flash out from her eyes, but instead, she just shook his head. “Many try to keep to tradition, but the land itself will not. You see it, don’t you?” She paused, truly looking at him then, as if she could pierce through the shadows of his dark robes. “You’ve changed as well.”

He grinned amusingly. “You believe I have such a great heart? Or, no, that Nuitari lured me to the darkness? I have always been what I am. It is why I was exiled to begin with.”

“Raistlin changed you,” Laurana spoke with utmost conviction. “Par-Salian changed you. Tanis changed you. And…from what I heard, Kitiara changed you.”

The name left her mouth unexpectedly. It was not a name that should have been easy for her to utter, not in this house, not with the painful memories it brought. It annoyed Dalamar greatly that it brought a similar pain to his own heart.

To his own chest, where the marks of fingertips still stayed imprinted on his skin, burning every so often.

“None of that changed me,” he told her. “I went to find great power, and that’s what I’ve finally received.” He said the rest with more bitterness than he had meant to reveal. “If any change has come, it is that I learned to find a lover that won’t come around and slit my neck if she fancies it.”

And then, Laurana did something most unexpected. She laughed.

Dalamar thought he could not grasp Tanis in all his complexities, but Laurana was beginning to baffle him. She was an elf, like him, and should understand how the passage of time leaves them still, more still than most. The reaction she gave him should not have been as surprising to him as it was.

“Then perhaps that is a good start, is it not? You are already making much wiser decisions.”

He scoffed. “I cannot even tell if you are speaking seriously now.”

“Then here’s another wise decision for you to make… Understand where I am coming from. I have felt Silvanesti’s roots in my own hands, and the change in them was already flowing through. It is inescapable, and I find that very comforting now.”

And with her strange words, she left him, gone to the other room where her husband was, probably still struggling with that same tie-string and stuck in old memories.

Something in what Laurana said unnerved him. He knew change occurred, that it must. He was not that stupid.

He had seen his homeland as a writhing nightmare. But nightmares were temporary, were passing. When one wakes from a nightmare, they are treated to what they last left when they fell asleep.

Could he painfully miss a home that no longer existed?

* * *

“What moved you to follow this path, apprentice?” Raistlin had once asked him. They had been in one of his studies, Dalamar fixing the bookshelves to better suit his shalafi’s needs, the pot of tea boiling back in the kitchens. It would take some time for the herbs to fully settle, so Dalamar had made use of his hour to fulfill his duties, to serving his master who sat at his desk, perusing over an envelope that had just arrived recently.

The question had been unexpected, but he turned to Raistlin with a careful eye.  _ Does he already know? _ Dalamar asked himself, and it would be a question he would keep asking himself for months until that moment. It would be a particular gleam in Raistlin’s eyes, as golden as his skin, or a turn of his head as he watched Dalamar move past him as he helped in his duties in the laboratory, where small things on the floor still mewled and begged.

His heart was racing, but he kept his face as placid as a lake, shelving one book firmly in place. “I have told you the story, have I not, Shalafi?”

“A dream, you say,” Raistlin whispered. He didn’t raise his head, continuing to read over the script on the envelope, but never opening it. “That led you to your books, where you practiced forbidden dark magic in secret. And you have not regretted it since?”

He wanted to understand his shalafi’s game but merely answered the question. “I do not. Why would I? Here I stand, serving one of the greatest mages on Krynn.”

“Is that all you were meant for, apprentice? I thought you had loathed serving.”

Dalamar felt unbalanced, for a short time. He gripped his wrists underneath his robes, trying to probe the hidden layers in Raistlin’s voice. Again, repeated ad nauseum,  _ Does he already know? _

“I loathed serving those who were weak, and that I could never rise past my station.” He kept the gentle fury out of his voice, for it had only been a year or so since leaving Silvanesti. The memory of that day played all too well in his head. “I could not learn anything from them. Nor could I respect them.”

“Your roundabout way of flattery is noted, Dalamar.” Raistlin finally let the envelope fall from his fingers to settle quietly on the desk. Dalamar quickly noted the thick handwriting on its front, blocky and wavering on the paper. It had been written quite sloppily, it was a wonder the mail could be delivered at all, but the surname ‘Majere’ had apparently been clear enough… “Still, you serve.”

_ This is a test. _ But a test for what exactly, Dalamar wasn’t sure of. No, if Raistlin truly knew, he would be a pile of ash by now. “We all serve the gods,” he answered.

By then, he saw something he hadn’t expected, a crooked smirk on Raistlin’s lips. As if whatever Dalamar had said had been utterly hilarious.

“Yes… the gods.” Raistlin took a pen from the side of his desk, swiftly writing a phrase over the envelope. “And isn’t that a particular wrinkle, apprentice? To forever serve, and never be truly free? Yet the gods serve no one in turn.” A pause. “The gods have tricked us. They make us believe we can ever be satisfied in the same mundane routine they graced us with.”

Dalamar did not have an answer, but he listened eagerly. Was this what he had been looking for, all this time?

“Fetch me my tea. You’ve steeped the herbs far too long again.” Raistlin finished his message on the envelope, then handed it to his apprentice. “And be sure to send this out before the day ends.”

* * *

“Raistlin once told me that there is a limit to how many spells a mage can cast in a single day,” spoke Tanis as they moved down the steps out of the home. Dalamar noted how the satchel was now finally, firmly tied up, most likely with Laurana’s help. “You’ve already taken me across half the length of the continent to Qualinesti, and with Laurana, it would only exhaust you further.”

“May I remind you that I am Master of the Tower in Palanthas, or is your memory finally waning from you, dear friend?”

He only saw a hint of annoyance in the man’s face, but certainly not enough to make him not continue. “Even Raistlin had his limits. I think you would know that just as well.”

Dalamar did not appreciate the comparison, but he smiled nonetheless.

“Good news, the griffins have answered my summons, so it should be a bit of an easier journey.” Laurana deftly waded through the conversation, already gesturing to one of the creatures that made a shape against the sky. “And Rashas won’t be using them anytime soon.”

“Never was one to think of the damn consequences,” Tanis spit out in a grumble, and only stopped any more ramblings from a brief touch from his wife’s hand on his arm.

This would not exactly be the most pleasant ride for Dalamar and, if it was for any other endeavor, he would simply wait until the next day, when his magical reserves would be filled again. If truly needed, he could always travel swiftly on his own. It may be true that the number of spells one could perform is limited, but Nuitari had been generous lately, and his status as Master of the Tower was not merely for show.

But again, he had to admit, he was curious for this company. Tanis, still so newly exiled, and Laurana, her previous words still ringing between his ears.

“This will give us some time too,” Laurana said again, the group of griffins moving closer. “To think. It’s what we all need.”

Were those words meant to include him as well? Dalamar once again, was curious about her.

“We can even think of it as a trip, like… we used to do.”

Tanis nodded, still calmer than before. “Hopefully no draconians will be chasing us this time,” he said with a chuckle.

Dalamar raised an eyebrow. “I am beginning to rethink this adventure. Trouble always seems to follow you, if I recall.”

“Well, we are also heading for it, aren’t we?” Laurana answered so readily. As the griffins descended, he could still hear the note in her voice when speaking about his home, about nurturing the trees that would never again be the same. “All of us should already be used to it by now.”

She wasn’t wrong. Dalamar smiled wryly.  _ Or maybe I’ll enjoy this trip. _

The traveling may be uneventful, or it might not. He still yearned for home, but the impatience he felt was a bit less.

Maybe he worried, upon entering Silvanesti, on what he would find.

Time to think, to prepare, before meeting the inevitable, sounded tempting to Dalamar. Tanis began wrapping their packs on the back of one griffin, while Laurana quietly conversed with another. Talons dug into the soil, a few sharp eyes flick to him with distrust, but they didn’t fly away, even as he saw one lash it’s lion tail behind it at the sight of the mage’s approach.

Later on, after a bumpy ride, he would thank his friends for this. Much, much later.


End file.
